Maintaining mash temp

[petrolSpice]

I want to give BIAB a shot but my biggest concern is maintaining mash temp. A lot of you use insulated coolers, but I'm hoping to be able to mash in my 11 gal brew kettle which is made of thin stainless steel, just to keep down equipment costs. I plan to wrap it up with insulation, but do any of you use a heat source to maintain the temp?

A hot plate or an immersion heater on an STC-1000 controller may work really well. The hot plate would be the easiest way. I have a turkey fryer to do the boiling but I think it would be too difficult to use it for maintaining a precise temp/

 

[RM-MN]

How well are your grains milled? If you have them double crushed or better yet if you mill them yourself with a Corona style mill so you can get them milled very fine you don't have to worry too much about maintaining the temperature because you don't need to mash as long. Try a 30 minute mash and see what temperature drop you get and if you got full conversion. I've been reducing my mash time more than that but it's only because my grains are milled so fine.

 

[Transamguy77]

+1 to what Rm said, I used to use 3 or 4 bath towels draped over the top to hold the temp, would only drop a degree or 2 over a 1 hour mash.

 

[petrolSpice]

I don't have a grain mill. My LHBS mills the grains for me in a roller-type barley crusher. For my first BIAB batch I was going to go with whatever crush they gave me. If it's not fine enough I'll likely end up milling my own.

 

[TimFarAway]

If they will mill finer, it is worth it to ask. I didn't on my first BIAB ,and got about 60% efficiency. Since then I ask and they run the whole grain bill through three times for me. Now I'm getting 75% or more.

 

[mtnagel]

I used to use blankets with a bungee cord. I used to lose 3-4F over a 1 hour mash.

Recently I bought a ski jacket at Goodwill and it fits perfect around my kettle (looks funny too). I used it once, but didn't track my temps, but I'm assuming it works better than the blankets.

 

[hawktrio]

A sleeping bag also works really well.

 

[soccerdad]

2 towels. Cheap. Works.

 

[NeoBrew]

I use a hot plate and an STC 1000 with a 15 amp relay. I also have a reflectix wrap made up to fit my kettle. Between the two it does a pretty good job maintaining temperature. When the heater kicks on I definitely need to stir. Otherwise it heats just the bottom very warm before the temp change gets to the part of the mash where the probe is.


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[chicken]

A sleeping bag also works really well.

I do that too.

 

[petrolSpice]

I use a hot plate and an STC 1000 with a 15 amp relay. I also have a reflectix wrap made up to fit my kettle. Between the two it does a pretty good job maintaining temperature. When the heater kicks on I definitely need to stir. Otherwise it heats just the bottom very warm before the temp change gets to the part of the mash where the probe is.

What hot plate are you using? Is it powerful enough to get the about 9 gal of mash up to 170F for mashout? I'd also like to be able to heat the mash to mashout temp without removing the insulation. The insulation will likely melt if I try to heat the mash with the turkey fryer, even on low.

 

[NeoBrew]

My solution is far from elegant. It is a Waring Pro. (Model: SB30) It is only 1300 watts. I never really intended it to do anything other than maintain temps. It will raise the temp of the water, but I've not tested it to see how long it takes.

My solution to that is to move the pot. That is a bit of a back breaker with upwards of 9 gallons of water and grains. I've been doing a dunk sparge so I do mashout by simply putting the grains into a separate pot at 168 degrees. Then I dump that into the main pot which I've already started to raise heat on the propane burner.